Urban Gardening (with Nick!)
I have been asking Nick to share a guest post on his “urban garden” for months and today is finally the day! I’ll see you for tomorrow’s post for now, here’s Nick!
There are a multitude of reasons for what inspired me to start a garden inside the apartment. The first being that I have a lot more time on my hands thanks to COVID-19 and the entertainment industry becoming non-existent because of it. The second and probably the most important reason is that I am a big supporter of sustainability. The term sustainability means to focus on meeting ones needs today without causing future generations to suffer because of the decisions made by the current generation. With that in mind, I asked myself why spend money on herbs and vegetables, most of which are not sourced locally, that add to my carbon footprint, (i.e. pollution from shipping from one location to the next, plastic waste for packaging, pollution from my car to drive to the store and back home), when I could do some research, planning, and grow them at home? Turns out there is no reason why I cannot do it besides the fact that I can be lazy sometimes. It is rewarding to go from a pot of brown soil to seeing a spec of green sprout up through it! I have found that working with plants indoors has led to better mental health for me and I feel less stressed around them than I would say working on the computer.
Currently I have 16 different plants in the apartment. They consist of 7 herbs, 3 vegetables, 4 succulents, and 3 flowers.
Herbs:
Cilantro
Sage
Basil
Thyme
Parsley
Mint
Rosemary
Vegetables:
Tomatoes
Yellow Bell Peppers
Scallions
Succulents and Flowers:
Calandiva
Sedum
2 varieties of Jade
Cat Grass
Texas Bluebonnet
Saguaro.
I started off like any beginner would with an herb garden kit for beginners. I found one on Amazon from a small company called Spade to Fork. They are a small business based in Oregon with a great story, so go check them out! I highly recommend them for any beginners or if you are looking for a project for your kids. The kit was easy to use with step by step instructions. The kit came with 5 herb seeds: Basil, Thyme, Sage, Cilantro, and Parsley. It also came with 5 peat pots, soil disks, and herb markers to know which one is which. Peat pots are essentially plant-based pots. They allow the soil to breathe which in turn leads to healthier plants. What I really like about these is that you can reuse them if you’d like or, when it is time to transplant your herbs, you can tear out the bottom and put the whole peat pot, with the plant, right into the soil and they are 100% biodegradable! I was curious how they would send you soil for the plants. It came like a hockey puck. All you do is add water and it expands and becomes soil for your herbs! It was like a science experiment in your kitchen, then again, I guess all of nature is a science experiment!
We have a large window that faces West, so we get nice sunlight in the afternoon which is a perfect spot for my plants to sit. I wanted to get a plant stand that would allow different levels (since space is a premium in an apartment) for all the plants. I found a nice plant stand on Amazon and it currently can hold all my plants! I am eventually going to have to do some rearranging as I move some of the smaller plants into bigger pots but that is a problem for a different day. It is, for the most part, stable enough for what I need it to be. I did add some supports to keep it from rocking back and forth. Overall, it does its job and looks nice in the apartment window.
In terms of gardening tools, I have just been using measuring cups and spoons from the kitchen, but I figured it was about time to get some tools that I could use specially for gardening. I went on Amazon and found a gardening tool kit for indoor gardening. It is cute when you see how small it is but it is perfect for the size plants I am dealing with. It comes with a pruner, snips, rake, trowel, shovel, and a glass spray bottle. It even came with a canvas tote bag to keep it all together. I did not need anything big and fancy that took up a lot of space. This certainly does the job and did not break the bank.
As the plants grow bigger, they need to be moved to larger pots that can handle their root systems and get the nutrients they need to be healthy. I wanted to find pots that were like the peat pots but had a little more structure to them. I found GeoPot which are awesome! They are fabric pots, so they allow the soil to breathe like the peat pots but are sturdier and do not tear and promote drainage. They are even machine washable so you can use them year after year!
As I started getting more seeds and wanted to grow more plants, I did not want to buy a bunch of smaller pots just to buy bigger pots several weeks later. While in my sustainability mode, I found a bunch of Starbucks mugs that I have collected from my travels across the country. They turn out to be great starter pots for my seeds. They do not have any drain holes so I must be careful on how much I water them, but I love the fact that I can reuse something instead of just throwing them away into a landfill (you can see some on our bookshelves!).
What works to grow in an apartment would be herbs for sure. They do not need a lot of space and caring for them is simple. They prefer to be on the drier side of soil so if you miss a day, it would not be the end of the world. Scallions have proved to be hassle-free. I took the end of the scallion, the white part with the roots from a Hello Fresh meal we had and stuck them in a glass filled with water. That is it! Succulents are also good for apartments. Depending on their age, they do not need much attention and once they are fully mature, they do not need a lot of water as their leaves hold most of the water that they use. This is my first-time growing vegetables so I do not know how well they will turn out seeing as the tomatoes can grow up to 4 feet tall and each little seedling requires its own 5-gallon pot. This will need to have an update in the future to see how they are doing.
I like gardening because it makes me feel relaxed and it is soothing to take care of them. They are low maintenance for the most part and they give you something in return at the end. It is nice to wake up every morning and while my coffee is brewing, I get out my bottle and water the plants and compare them from the day before and see how they are doing. It is satisfying to see their progress.
I would love to see my plants take off and become their full, mature selves and provide us with herbs and vegetable for our own meals. Ultimately, I would like to provide all our own vegetables and herbs at home. If I do it right, we can live off what we produce which will make us feel good inside and help be more sustainable.
